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Internet Service & Mbps: The Reality

I know not how Internet Service Providers (ISP) work globally, I can only speak for North American practices. Thus, the following information is restricted to North American ISP business practices.

Internet Service Providers continually fool customers by using abbreviations and terminology to which most consumers are ignorant. Most commonly ISPs advertise their bandwidth flow using megabit per second, but usually they abbreviate to Mbps, which confuses most customers. This confusion leads to many customers believing their bandwidth is much greater than what is actually offers. Moreover, what is offered is rarely achieved.

First and foremost, you need to know the abbreviation the ISPs use, which is Mbps. This stands for megaBITS per second. Normally a provider says you get X Mbsp download and X Kbsp (kilobit per second) upload.

BIT & BYTE
I truly hate to do this, but we have to tackle some mathematics in order to comprehend the relationship between a bit and a byte, a kilobit and kilobyte, a megabit and megabyte, and so on. The good news is that the math is easy, it's the terms you have to wrap your head around.

Every piece of information transferred using computers is based on the bit, the lowest common denominator in the binary world. A string of binary code (a specific combination of 1's and 0's) equals a bit of information. A bit is so small and insignificant, it's like a single cell in a human body. The bit alone is not important (just as the cell isn't), yet the combination of bits (and combination of cells) is important. If you're a biology fan, you can relate binary to DNA and rNA, and a bit is a cell.

8 bits = 1 byte

1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte (kilo referring to 1000)

1024 kilobytes = 1 megabyte (mega referring to 100,0000)

The 1024 standard is true, but it becomes more complex after the megabyte. In theory 1024 megabytes equates to a single gigabyte, but the reality is more complex. But the upper stages aren't important for this topic.

Bait-and-SwitchBait-and-switch is actually a simple form of fraud, most commonly used in retail environments, yet this form of fraud is legal. Your ISP uses this form of fraud two fold.

ISPs, in their literature and through their human agents, use specific vocabulary to confuse the customer, namely using the bit system instead of the byte system. No one uses the bit system anymore because everything we deal with is mega or giga in byte size. Hell, the bit system expired before the year 2000. The bit system, as it is employed by ISPs, is merely used to confuse the customer. Let's look at an example.

In the average North American metropolis, an ISP offers roughly a domestic speed of 5-8Mbps down. Superficially this looks like 5-8 MEGABYTES download speed, but it's far from it. Using the bit conversion, 8 Mbps means 1 megabyte per second. That means when an ISP says they offer 8 Mbps they really mean they only offer 1 megabyte download. And beyond this, they won't ever actually offer you that much. They sell you on a concept and once you sign up and do the math, you're stuck with a different reality. Bait-and-switch.

Shitty Reality
In order for you to be promised 8 megabytes per second download, your ISP would have to offer change to its vocabulary, otherwise say they offer 64 Mbps. And even though you're promised 8 megabyte downloads, you'll be lucky to experience half those speeds due to throttling. In some Asian countries (S. Korea) it's common to actually experience 25 megabyte-per-second downloads.

The U.S. barely made the top 10 list of countries with advanced internet technology. Most eastern countries are more than 30x times advanced. The sad reality is that technology has nothing to do with it. North America was gutted in the 1990s and fiber optics installed throughout every city and its periphery towns, but big business is holding back. ISPs make TONS of money by confusing customers with lingo and offering shit service far below capabilities so that they can ration out "upgrades" to high-paying customers.

Perspective
Some of you reading this thread may not fully appreciate the numeric information I've provided, and that's perfectly fine. So, in that case, allow me to offer some perspective, some association.

Feature film at 720p = 800+ megabytes

Feature film at 1080i = 1.25-2 gigabytes

Low-quality MP3 = 1-3 megabytes

Medium-quality MP3 = 3-6 megabytes

High-quality MP3 (iTunes) 9-15 megabytes

In a perfect world, if you actually received the bandwidth your provider offers, you're looking at a top of 1 megabyte per second, which would be 15 seconds for a 320kpbs MP3, and 13 minutes for a 720p feature film. Double that for a 1080i film. You don't get that good even with a T1 these days. So, if your ISP actually provided the offered 8 Mbps, and your connection had no hiccups, you could download an HD feature film in 13 minutes. But you actually can't!

Final Thoughts
Because capitalism has stomped its way into interfering progress, there's nothing we as consumers can do to change things. We can, however, understand the bullshit these companies attempt to dish out so that we can better choose between competitors. Even if your company offers 10 Mbps, that's no more than 1.25 megabytes, and what you'll actually achieve is at best half that.

Remember, the megabit is much, much less than the megabyte. Your ISP is pulling a bait-and-switch on you with the megabit numbers. Why? Because North Americans are idiots, especially Americans. We see a higher number and automatically assume it's better.

If you're interested in a bit/byte calculator, I suggest this simple one.

Unfortunately high speed just means faster than dialup. Back in the day a shotgun modem was high speed. It's just another way they can get you. I still can't get used to paying twice as much for half the speed compared to where I used to live. Although having an ISP that has a main router still set to default admin user and password is handy. I have gone in a few time and reset the DNS server when they were down. You have to love small town service.

Mr. T made his van go twice the speed of light because he wanted to prove that quantum physics was a bunch of jibba jabba.

Even at Vuall's 10.73Mbps, that's only 1.34 megabytes per second down, and he doesn't reside in North America.

As I said, speeds are measured by ISPs in kilobits and megabits, not kilobytes and megabytes. This is where customers get confused. Even Speedtest.net measures in megabits, not megabytes (hence Mbps while testing). Mbps = Megabits per second.

Last edited by lazserus; Jul 7th, 2011 at 7:50 PM.
Reason: I removed my Speedtest results to stay on target.

States are irrelevant to the topic of this thread, my friend. The point of the thread is that companies confuse customers by using abbreviations such as Mbps, which most think of as megabytes per second. Our individual downstreams have no real bearing on this topic other than to galvanize the information I originally provided.

I posted mine only because it was requested, DBA. But since you're going to whine about it, I deleted mine and I'm still on topic.

Originally Posted by Anarch

Stop being such a mod nazi laz...do as I say and not as I do aint cool man.

This thread isn't called Post Your Bandwidth. It's a discussion on the definition of Mbps. If you guys want a thread sharing your bandwidth with the rest of the membership then create one. This is a tips forum.

I wish you guys would actually pay attention to the content you post. It's absurd that you stray so far from the topic and then call people Nazis for telling you to stay on topic.

I wish you would stop acting like a control freak sheesus . I mean really excuse us for not commenting the way you wish us too but nobody was out of line here laz nobody but yourself with your overbearing insistence that we write what you want to read.

Call it off topic , call it off center, call it what ever you like mang all we poor peons here see is an out of control nazi mod..I mean seriously your making Lycanox and Cart look tame by comparison.

All us posting our band width is a testament to the speeds our IPs allow us (AS YOU BROUGHT UP IN YOUR OP) and it looks as though some of us do far better then other depending upon our local rather then our internet providers hatching some kind of conspiracy to throttle our speeds by keeping us in the dark....

Not a big surprise.

I got more non surprising news for ya, Many MANY of us understand abbreviations like Mbs and Kbs and terms of service/ use contracts and what average speed means and all this wonderfull stuff you feel inclined to share with us.... only when we share back with you in a way you personally disapprove of and all of a sudden "we need to cut that out"

Seriously man loosen up.

Jim Crow America relegated Blacks to the back of buses. Israel wants Arabs excluded from the bus entirely.

States are irrelevant to the topic of this thread, my friend. The point of the thread is that companies confuse customers by using abbreviations such as Mbps, which most think of as megabytes per second. Our individual downstreams have no real bearing on this topic other than to galvanize the information I originally provided.

It would be unfair to imply this is meant as deliberate misinformation on the providers part. If a person chooses to be ignorant of the terminology used in a service they pay for it is not the services fault. Bits and bytes are standards that have been in place longer than high speed internet has been available.

Mr. T made his van go twice the speed of light because he wanted to prove that quantum physics was a bunch of jibba jabba.